I Left My Face in San Francisco
by starofoberon
Summary: Casefic, team-centric, with a double-scoop of surreal. Over the next 28 days, the UNSUB plans to kill 7 men. Finding out the UNSUB's shocking motive doesn't make the BAU team's job a bit easier. I hope I can wrap this up in 12 chapters.
1. Return of EcoNinja

Disclaimer: The usual. The _Criminal Minds_ characters belonged originally to Jeff Davis and now are the property of CBS and the _Criminal Minds_ production staff. They aren't mine. Just imagine how much more interesting their little lives would be if they were ...

Warning: There are some surreal elements coming up later. I mean, surreal even for me.

Thank you, everyone who reads, favorites, alerts, and especially reviews this.

You light up my life.

**I Left My Face in San Francisco **

**Chapter One **

**The Return of Eco-Ninja**

It was not quite five o'clock in the morning.

It was Wednesday, November 24th, 2010, the day before Thanksgiving. They were not even due into the office until 8:30, and several of them had applied to take a personal day, or at least an hour or two, for holiday preparations.

Emily Prentiss stared at her mobile with a look that would reduce a flesh and blood person to a quivering wreck. "No," she told it firmly. "No. You are not calling me."

But she picked up anyway.

David Rossi immediately regretted letting his niece reprogram his cellphone so the BAU ring tone was "I Fought the Law and the Law Won." Nothing was funny before 6 AM, damn it.

But he picked up anyway.

Spencer Reid's brain tried to incorporate the sound of his phone into his dream, which meant that the engine on the speedboat he was pursuing down the Potomac sounded like T-Mobile commercial.

Eventually he figured out what was going on. A long arm snaked out of the covers and picked up his cell. "I hope you're my imagination," he mumbled to Brinker, in communications.

Aaron Hotchner rolled over and glared at his bedside table. "No," he told his phone. "Do not do this to me." Already dreading calling Jessica yet again, _sorry, can you please come over and take Jack_, dreading even more telling Jack, _sorry, man, this is what I do, I help people when the bad guys go after them_, he picked up the phone and hit Talk.

Derek Morgan opened his eyes and groped for his phone and it occurred to him that if he opened the window and pitched the damn thing out into the street, with luck a bus would run over it and he could go back to sleep.

But he picked up anyway.

Penelope Garcia was already awake. Already driving toward Quantico, as a matter of fact. When Communications got the first inkling of trouble, they had called her. Inhaling sugar and caffeine as she negotiated the light predawn DC Metro traffic, she kept up with the latest developments on their potential case via her Bluetooth.

It didn't sound good.

By a quarter to seven, every one of them, wide awake, go bags at the ready, sat around the table at the BAU's offices at Quantico, sucking at their beverages of choice, each thinking that the others looked more awake and alert than he or she felt. Each wondered how the others did it.

Garcia entered the situation room heavily laden with file folders. "Hi, guys," she panted as she laid her burden down on a utility table. "This one goes way back. Everyone remember San Francisco's Eco-Ninja?"

"Which one?" Emily asked, stirring more honey into her tea. "'Ninety-four, or 'Oh-two?"

"They were probably both the same guy," Rossi said. "Voice prints confirmed that the recordings used in both sets of abductions were done by the same person. So while the guy in the ninja suit might or might not have been the same person, at least part of the gang did both sets."

"You guys are way ahead of me," Garcia scolded. "Let me present this in the order I have it here, and I think it'll save time."

There was some good-natured grumbling, but the team did settle down quickly.

"OK," she began. "September 21, 1994, somebody who self-identified as "Eco-Ninja," but who was probably part of a group of no less than three individuals, abducted seven men in rapid succession from their homes and places of business. The elapsed time between the first abduction and the discovery of the last body was exactly twenty-eight days."

"Were the abductions four days apart?" Reid interrupted.

'No, they were all over the place," Hotchner told him. "two of them were on the same day, in fact."

"That was the second set," Penelope said sternly. "Let me keep going, guys."

She picked up her remote and began projecting graphics with her presentation. "At each abduction site, Eco-Ninja left a color photocopy of a map with seven small yellow circles on it. It was the same map each time. Each circle represented one of the abduction sites, both past and future. Along with the map, Eco-Ninja also spray-painted a small stencil on the pavement. The stencil said, 'It's business.' There's been no success discovering what the victims had in common, although it's clear all seven men were selected in advance and researched in detail.

"Videotape of all seven victims was sent to persons who might have a relationship with the men, either personal or professional. On the tapes, the person in the ninja costume did not speak. Instead, he used a remote device to trigger sound files with prerecorded commands, statements, and replies to questions his prisoners asked. Eco-Ninja never explained what the point was of sending the videos, since he never asked for ransom or made any demands of any sort.

"October 21, 2002, eight years and one month later, a similar group of seven men was abducted, again over a time span of exactly twenty-eight days. Again, at each abduction site he – or they – left a map of the attack sites on the menu. This time, the spray-painted stencil said, 'It's political.'

"DVDs of all seven victims were sent to persons with reason to care what happened to them. Again, no demands. Again, twenty-eight days later, it was all over.

Garcia shifted files.

"Last night, November 23, 2010, an activist with Bay Area Planet Love, an environmental activist group, was abducted from the BAPL offices." She projected the image of a scruffy bearded man with a bright tie-dyed headband and thick glasses. "They aren't real big on formal identification down there at the BAPL. His name is allegedly Dr. Coral Reef. And this map appeared at the site, and this stencil. This circle here is the one that their offices are located in."

Images of a commercial map with seven highlighted circles showed on the screen, and also a stenciled note: "It's personal."

"The police thought it might be a copycat, but a few hours ago, a quick survey of the highlighted areas revealed that a similar map and message appeared on the sidewalk in front of a homeless shelter, in this yellow circle right here, on Sunday, November 21, eight years and one month after the last series.

"Staff at the shelter did a head count. One of their regular guys is missing. His true name is unknown to them, but the mental health people probably can ID him. People call him Stoner and Longfellow. He turned up missing the night the map and stencil appeared. Two of the residents there claim they saw two ninjas stuffing Stoner into a black van."

"So he's back," Morgan sighed.

"Right on schedule," Garcia confirmed. "Although I don't think a whole lot of people were expecting him to make another appearance. And he already has two of the seven men he's going to kill between now and the 19th of December. And so far, nobody has received a DVD."

"He has three days on us," Derek said with a frown.

"Most of the other victims seem to have been men of some standing in the community," Reid said, paging through the files. "But – an environmental activist who doesn't use his own name? A guy from a homeless shelter?"

"His job's going to be a lot harder this time," Prentiss observed. "Lots of time has passed. The world has been changing. Lots more security cameras out there, a lot more means of tracking someone down. Unless he's right up to date on the latest technology, he's gonna fall down somewhere."

"We may be later than we'd like to be," Rossi said, "but we know that he has spent days, maybe weeks and months, surveilling his victims. He can't do that without leaving tracks. Not any more."

Aaron Hotchner allowed himself one unhappy sigh, then set his jaw and closed off doubts and regrets and personal concerns. "OK, guys, I know the timing could be a lot better for everyone, but wheels up in thirty."


	2. What Made Them Become Somebody?

**I Left My Face in San Francisco**

**Chapter 2**

**What Made Them Become Somebody?**

Another small advantage the team had in approaching the return of Eco-Ninja was that during the 2002 series of attacks, a previous iteration of the unit, under the direction of Jason Gideon, had devoted three days to performing the kind of in-depth analyses that Penelope Garcia often currently performed in the space of an hour. At this moment, as they soared 35,000 feet above Pennsylvania, Garcia began reviewing that analysis to them.

"Oh, my friends," her friendly voice chirped on the computer monitor, "your victimology is all over the map. All of them were white. The youngest was twenty-four; the eldest was sixty-eight. All of them were between five-five and six-three. The same thing for marital status and parenthood. All over the map. One self-identified as gay. Another one's wife identified him as actively bisexual.

"Educational level ranges from tenth-grade dropout to advanced degrees, including one doctorate. From set one, _It's Business_: a veteran's affairs caseworker, a print shop owner, a cable installer, a union business agent, a chain bookstore manager, a pharmacist, and a high school math teacher. Set two, _It's Political, _includes a college geology instructor, an insurance agent, a motel manager, a hardware store employee, a urologist, a bus driver, and a radio sound engineer. Set three, _It's Personal_, so far an environmental activist and a homeless man."

"Baby Girl, that covers almost the entire adult white male population in the US," Morgan said. "Was the PhD the college professor?"

"The geology teacher was an instructor," Reid replied. He was sitting by himself on a back seat with one foot on the opposite seat and a stack of files on one bony knee. "He had a Master's. The Ph.D was the chain bookstore manager. American literature."

Morgan made a frustrated noise. "What happens when we look back over previous jobs?"

"Nothing jumped out," Garcia replied. "A lot of fast food, retail sales, phone sales rep, that kind of entry level stuff at the beginnings of their careers."

"The only model they fit is 'random white guy,'" Morgan sighed, "but there's no doubt that each of them was individually and deliberately selected and stalked prior to the kill-cycle. "These guys could have been anybody – so what made them become somebody for Eco-Ninja?"

"Something I want to know," said Emily Prentiss, flipping through pages, "is why, if this UNSUB is 'Eco-Ninja,' are there no major polluters represented? The only person who has any obvious relationship to ecology is this Coral Reef guy – and he's _pro_ environment."

"Eco-Ninja isn't about the environment," Rossi said without looking up from his own stack of files. "He's all about cleaning up the world. 'I move subtly through the world, cleansing away society's messes,' he said on one of his first tapes. So don't get yourself trapped in the mindset that it's all about global warming and endangered species."

"Interesting choice of words," Spencer Reid said. "_Subtly_, not _silently_ or stealthily. And _cleansing_ rather than _cleaning_."

Each of them individually paged through photographs of the fourteen men from the first two series of attacks: fourteen men who could have been anyone, each of them kept in a four-by-four-by-four foot cage of chain link fencing for periods ranging from thirteen hours to eleven days. All of them abused, some lightly, some severely. All of them interrogated by Eco-Ninja, who asked ... peculiar questions.

"The questions," Hotchner said. "Garcia, what do you have on the questions that this group asks?"

"You mean the ones that were specific to the–"

"No, the general ones. The ones that he seems to have asked everyone."

"Got them," she announced. "Eight friendly, getting-to-know-you questions that aren't even framed as questions. Eight creepy hair-stand-up-on-end not-really-questions. You'll find them on one of the last couple sheets in the packets I gave you back at the office."

_The Questions_

_Recite some poetry for me_

_Describe your mother's hair_

_Tell me about your favorite subject in school_

_Sing a song for me_

_Describe your first sexual experience_

_Name a movie that you liked_

_Tell me about a book that you have read_

_Quote to me something from the Bible_

_Tell me how you plan to escape from me_

_Tell me what you want to eat and drink while you are here_

_Tell me how you will kill me if you get the chance_

_Tell me which article of clothing I should take last_

_Tell me how easy it will be for me to make you scream_

_Tell me how you would prefer to die_

_Tell me where I should dump your body _

_Tell me which part of your body I should crush first_

"They aren't always asked in that exact order, but it's close," Hotchner continued. "The first conclusive sign that 2002 wasn't a copycat was that the audio clips that asked the questions were identical – the exact clips Eco-Ninja played in 1994."

"It's always the same voice?" Emily asked.

"As nearly as we can tell."

"Guys, guys," Garcia said suddenly. "I have San Francisco field office on the phone. The Bay Area Plant Love people just brought them a DVD of their guy in a cage that someone delivered to their headquarters about an hour ago. They've uploaded to the Bureau's secure server. Let me get you the URL and you can see it for yourselves."

Morgan, the default computer expert if Garcia wasn't on the plane, typed in the address and the entire team gathered around the monitor.

There was a smear of light as the camera was moved and adjusted, and then the scene resolved to a large room with bare and dirty white walls. Against the wall was a chain-link cage, its floor covered with a nest of towels, blankets, and what appeared to be discarded clothing.

Dr. Coral Reef crouched in the cage, clutching at the chain-link with both hands. "Who are you?" he demanded, his voice ragged with rage. "What are you? Why am I here?"

A recorded voice recited – and recited was the only word for it, since the tone was that of someone reading from a script, not someone in a conversation - "_You are here until you are not here._"

"Great," Coral Reef snarled. "Very Zen. Who are you, and what do you want?"

"_You are here because you are a slut and a destroyer."_

The BAU team exchanged glances. Eco-Ninja had never before answered that question, insofar as they knew.

"A destroyer?" Morgan repeated.

"A slut?" Reid repeated.

"A what?" Coral Reef shouted.

"_You heard me_," the disembodied voice said. "_You should continue to hear me. It is a good thing to hear me._"

"That's a recording," Rossi said. "It sounds like an answer, but it's another recording made for the occasion, so to speak."

"It's an awkward way to phrase it," Reid observed. "Maybe English isn't this person's first language?"

"_Recite some poetry for me._"

"You're out of your goddamn mind!" Coral Reef roared.

"_An uncooperative attitude does not pay."_

"Yeah? Well you can shove your attitu–" There was a bright flash of electric blue and Coral Reef's defiance vanished. He stared blindly until the Taser current ceased, then cowered in his corner.

"_Recite some poetry for me._"

There was a long silence, then Doctor Coral Reef recited weakly, "Roses are red, violets are blue, cat shit stinks, and so do you."

"_Thank you._"

Evidently, Eco-Ninja was more interested in compliance than in artistic achievement. Equally evidently, Dr. Coral Reef was as surprised as the team was. He drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.

"Pause it," Hotch said. "Look over there." He pointed at a white piece of fabric with a red patch and writing on it. "That towel has shown up in other cages. It's a _Fawlty Towers _PBS membership gift from the nineteen-eighties. He's even using the same blankets and rags to line the cages that he did eight and sixteen years ago."

"Apparently, he's quite a recycler," Rossi said with a hint of a smile. "Maybe he does care about the environment."

"_You are a destroyer and a slut_," the voice repeated, then added, "_and you destroyed my best friend. You left her alive, but her mind and her spirit were gone. She is nothing but a husk of what she once was._"

"Wh-what the hell?" Coral Reef gasped. "I never destroyed anyone!"

"This is completely new," Aaron said. "If this is really Eco-Ninja, then he meant this 'it's personal' thing literally."

"_Tell me about your favorite subject in school_."

"I never destroyed anyone!"

"_Tell me about your favorite subject in school_."

"I'm a doctor! I don't destroy–" Abruptly he raised his arms. "OK, OK! Chemistry! I loved chemistry! Especially biochemistry! It was elegant! It made sense, please don't–"

A short figure in ninja gear, a scarf, and goggles entered the picture from the direction Dr. Coral Reef had been gazing. The figure was broad-shouldered, deep-chested, but had thin legs, and carried a Taser X26.

"Chemistry," Coral Reef repeated. "I loved the equations! They balanced out perfectly, like I wish the rest of the world balanced out."

Eco-Ninja holstered the Taser, and Coral Reef gave an audible sigh of relief.

"Pause it – do you think he really is a doctor?" Emily Prentiss said.

"You mean medical, or academic?" Reid asked.

"I don't know. Either."

"The mindset – the attitude toward biochemistry – it's possible," Reid said. "It also fits in with someone who's into the ecological whole, the biosphere. Go ahead, Morgan. Hit Play."

"I just want to know why I'm here," Dr. Coral Reed whined.

"_Recite some poetry for me._"

The doctor – of one kind or another – seemed more willing to take the request seriously this time. After a period of thought, he said, "It matters not ... something something, how charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

Eco-Ninja removed a remote device from his (or possibly her) belt and pointed it toward the far side of the room. The sound of thunderous applause and cries of "Bravo!" filled the air and bounced off the walls.

Dr. Coral Reef studied Eco-Ninja sullenly. "Pardon me if I don't bow."


End file.
